“It Was Never About A Hot Dog And
A Coke®!” Wins First Place In South East Region In Reader
Views Annual Literary Awards

Quote from a Writer's Quill –
Lady Mary Wortley Montague

Writers Born This Month – Robert
Ellison, Dr. Seuss, Douglas Adams, Flannery O’Connor, and many
others.

________________________________

VIC DiGENTI TO SPEAK TO NFW ON MARCH 14

ABOUT GREAT BEGINNINGS: THAT
ALL-IMPORTANT FIRST PAGE

Let’s face it, we have short
attention spans. If the author doesn’t catch and hold the
reader’s attention with the first line, first paragraph and
first page, they might look for another book. Vic DiGenti, the
award-winning author of the Windrusher series, leads us through a
fast-paced, upbeat session looking at the keys to Great Beginnings,
and tells us why it’s so important to grab the reader in the
beginning. Bring copies of your own first page for feedback from the
group.

The novelist will speak at the March 14
meeting of the North Florida Writers. The meeting will begin at 2
p.m. Saturday in the meeting room of the Webb Wesconnett Library
(corner of 103rd Street and Harlow Boulevard).

________________________________

AND THEN I INVENTED “USA TODAY”

By HOWARD DENSON

Okay, technically the headline is
incorrect. I didn’t create “USA Today,” but,
during the “hot metal” days, 16 years before that
publication was born, I realized that it would be feasible to have a
national newspaper. I wasn’t thinking in terms of pages being
copied via satellites and sent to Podunk, Poughkeepsie, or Palatka.

As a flunky extraordinaire on the
copy desk, I might pick up a page mock-up and story to be edited.
Pages back then generally had eight columns; later, most papers went
to a six-column format. Each page was about 24 inches tall. (Quick
digression about a linguistic curiosity: The mock-ups were called
“dummies” in Pensacola and Tallahassee but “diagrams”
in Birmingham.)

Often Coca-Cola, Sears, or
Chevrolet might have an ad that took up most of a page, but not all.
It might be a six (column) x 20 (inches), a 6x20. That produced an
upside-down “L” of open space: room for some small
stories down the left column and another story that could have been
stretched across the top (or one story with enough copy to take up
all of the space).

(Are you following? If you get
lost on a digression, I’m not turning around the Scion
Toaster-Car to go back and get you.)

Since that ad and one good-sized
story could take up the whole space, it occurred to me that an entire
newspaper could largely be done in Juan Particular City and the
pages could be sent out to Other Particular Towns and Cities. This
was before desktop programs on computers, so I looked at the photo
wire that curled out photographs on tannish-pink pages that were
ready to be duplicated. It was only a hop, skip, and a hokey-poky to
realize that the entire page could be sent out.

Certain pages could have had
blank spots for the masthead and a few local stories, but essentially
it was ready to publish. I was thinking, by golly, I could do it.

We need a movie montage here: The
issues roll off the press, and we see mastheads change as some papers
merge, and then many doors are shuttered as hundreds of papers give
up the ghost. Finally less than a decade after the change in the
millennium, we see articles and columns exploring “The Death of
the American Newspaper,” “News, Yes, But No Paper,”
and “Power Shift in the Media.”

Some newspapers that aren’t
closing outright are going strictly online. Each paper developed a
website a few years ago and worked hard to attract visitors/readers
to justify higher prices for these online ads. “The Christian
Science Monitor” is mainly online. Other papers are offering
websites and maybe two or three paper publications a week.

One columnist whistled by the
graveyard by consoling his editorial room fellows that, with the
paper format phasing out, the reporters, editors, and columnists
could focus again on Our Real Business, the News. Besides blaming the
cost overruns on the printers and their unions, he fussed about the
cost of the trucking business associated with print. All of those
salaries going to non-journalists could be re-directed toward paying
more to the writers, editors, and other cockeyed optimists.

He really did not take the
ancillary business angle far enough. Depending on the size of a
newspaper, the Paper might have a series of small corporations (with
interlocking boards) handling different functions. Trucks would be
handled by The Daily Planet Transport Co. The Daily Planet
Publishing Co. would use the presses, composing room, and page plate
equipment to print other papers (student newspapers or evening
newspapers, pamphlets, or even books. The Daily Planet Arts Series,
Inc. might exist because the paper’s advertising bureau decided
to increase its revenue by sponsoring events and selling tickets
instead of just hawking movies, concerts, and performances.

Each corporation could raise its
own fees just enough for the overall corporation to whine that it had
to put nails in its pockets just to have something chinking down
there. Like motion picture or television studios, they often could
claim that, darn it all, they couldn’t pay James Garner a
percentage of the net because “The Rockford Files” or
“Maverick,” ah, never made a profit, no, really it
didn’t.

What has caused such a calamity
to come about?

1. Newspapers in America
generally cranked up when some individual wanted to express a certain
political view. Andrew Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson backed such
enterprises provided their publication revealed what a scoundrel
Jefferson or Hamilton was. If a man wanted influence, he opened a
paper; often it wasn’t necessary to make a profit. To the truly
wealthy, any money “lost” on their newspaper was strictly
chump change. For example, Bill Buckley used family money to pay off
the debts of “The National Review.” Conscience of a
conservative was more valuable to him than coin of the realm.

2. Morbid obesity set in as
newspapers tried to get larger and larger. A century ago, a daily
issue might have a section of four, six, eight, ten, or twelve pages.
In the last quarter of a century, a daily paper might weigh as much
as a Sunday paper or a Thanksgiving paper, but, once the ads were
discarded, what remained might be a paper with little heft.

3. Expanding the obesity, we have
Rupert Murdoch swallowing newspapers across the continents. Murdoch,
an ideologue, believes strongly in making a profit. Other large
corporations unwisely merged willy-nilly with other papers (e.g., one
corporation owning both the “Los Angeles Times” and “The
Chicago Tribune”).

4. There’s a transition
going on, since youths get most of their news from Jon Stewart,
Stephen Colbert, and the internet. The percentage of young readers
will continue to decline. The internet emphasis has changed the way
readers think, they argue.

5. “Civic pride” and
the “edifice complex” have caused many newspapers to
waste their resources. They want a grander building and sell or tear
down the original building. They have spent their resources to have
civic centers or ball fields named after their paper.

Even so, there are other points
to consider:

1. Changes are always taking
place. In the early 20th Century, the U.S. was plagued by the Penny
Press, which survived on gossip, titillation, and fabrication. Papers
survived despite the impact of movies, the news reels, television and
TV news, and radio news, talk radio, and NPR.

2. Newspapers are still
influential and can still be good investments, especially in smaller
cities (whose daily newspapers usually have been bought up by “The
New York Times,” Gannett, Morris, etc.). The internet is not
going to cover Thomasville, Laramie, or Florence as well as the local
newspaper. The papers serve a purpose. Decades ago, an irritated
woman complained about small paper: “Oh, I don’t read it.
All it has are weddings, obituaries, ads, and Little League stories.”
Within a year, she came in to have articles printed about her
daughter’s engagement, shower, and wedding. Then her husband
died, and she took over his jewelry business and regularly placed
ads. Oh, and her son won a trophy for his Little League team.

3. When major events occur, we
don’t want to print out a page on the internet. We want a
newspaper to put in our Major Events stack, with 72- to 96-point
headlines announcing “War Ends,” “JFK Killed,”
“Elvis Dies,” “Men Land on Moon,” etc. When
the University of Florida won a national football championship, some
Gators took the paper to a recently deceased friend’s grave and
spread it out (metaphorically) for him to read. A computer monitor or
a print-out fails to celebrate or bemoan great events.

4. We don’t want to read
the exact same Associated Press story on Yahoo or AOL as we do in the
newspaper, but different stories and perspective are available.

Some publishers are even toying
with the notion of turning their newspapers into non-profit
organizations. That would reduce taxes for them.

Regardless, here’s 100 to 1
bet that in a century, we will still have newspapers. If I’m
right, spread a front page over my bone lot. If I’m wrong, take
my dust to court.

FROM VIC DIGENTI OF FLORIDA WRITERS'
ASSN.

By VIC DiGENTI

As I sadly watch my 401K turn into a
201K, I have to get away and write or I'll go even crazier. So, I
took some time today to pack a stimulus plan full of choice items
into the March FWA Blog posting. Go to
http://fwapontevedra.blogspot.com/ for all the news that fits. You
won't be sorry.

Writers who want to promote their
publications are encouraged to visit the website of JacketFlap at
http://www.jacketflap.com/videos. More than 200,000 people visit the
site every month, and JacketFlap Videos will be a powerful tool in
promoting books. In the coming weeks, I'll also be announcing a
number of other exciting new features that writers may enjoy.

JacketFlap Videos is a central place
where people can find book trailers, author interviews, book
readings, and more. To get to JacketFlap Videos, click the new Book
Videos link under the Books tab in the main navigation bar. Once
you're in JacketFlap Videos, there are a number of ways to navigate
through the videos. In the top of the left column, you can use the
Find Videos search box to search the video description. This will let
you search for videos about a certain subject (e.g. sports, romance,
adventure) or a person that appears in the video (e.g. an author
name). You can also use the search "in book title" option
to search for videos about a specific book. Below that, you'll find a
Videos By Category navigation menu where you can browse through
videos by category (e.g. book trailers, interview, etc.). Similarly,
the Videos by Book Ages navigation menu lets you browse videos about
books for specific reading levels (e.g. Ages 4 - 8, Young Adult,
etc.).

Most importantly, you can submit your
own videos for inclusion on JacketFlap! In order to submit a video to
JacketFlap, it must already be uploaded somewhere else, such as
YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Vimeo, Viddler, or a publisher's web
site, like Scholastic, HarperCollins, etc. All you need to know is
the URL of the page where the video is located. Please don't try to
submit the full embed code that contains a bunch of HTML. The URL of
the page should be all you need to submit your video.

AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR JEANNE GOWEN
DENNIS TO SPEAK ON MARCH 12

The First Coast Christian Writers will
hear Jeanne Gowen
Dennis<http://www.jeannedennis.com/Site/Speaking.html>, an
award-winning author, CLASS-certified speaker, vocal soloist, and
BreakPoint Centurion. Her inspirational book, Running Barefoot on
Holy
Ground<http://www.jeannedennis.com/Site/Running_Barefoot_on_Holy_Ground.html>,
embodies her passion for helping others grow in intimacy with the
Creator. Jeanne has published eleven
books<http://www.jeannedennis.com/Site/Books.html> for adults
and children and has written for Focus on the Family periodicals,
Campus Life, CBN.com, DaySpring, and others. She has been interviewed
on the HarvestShow and national and local radio. Speaking venues have
included the National Church Library Association, Biola University,
homeschool conferences, writers conferences, churches, schools, and
bookstores. Jeanne has worked with adults and children of all ages
for over 25 years as a wife, mother, grandmother, and veteran
homeschooler.

The mission of First Coast Christian
Writers is to support its members through improving writing skills
with education and critiques, networking within the publishing
industry, and holding each other accountable to achieve goals.

The group meet from 6:45-8:45 p.m.
every Thursday in room 513 at Christ's Church, 6045 Greenland Rd., in
Jacksonville, near the Avenues Mall at the intersection of I-95 and
9A South. Every meeting includes a speaker and writing critiques for
any genre. Visitors 18 and older are always welcome. Dues are $1 per
week.

“IT WAS NEVER ABOUT A HOT DOG AND
A COKE®!” WINS FIRST PLACE IN SOUTH EAST REGION IN READER
VIEWS ANNUAL LITERARY AWARDS

“It was never about a hot dog
and a Coke®!” by author Rodney L. Hurst, Sr. has been
selected as the Winner in the Southeastern Regional Nonfiction
Category for 2008 by Reader Views Annual Literary Awards –
Reviewers Choice. The annual awards were established to honor writers
who self-published or had their books published by a small press,
university press, or independent book publisher.

“It was never about a hot dog and
a Coke®!” is subtitled “A Personal Account of the
1960 Sit-in Demonstrations in Jacksonville, Florida and Ax Handle
Saturday” and published by WingSpan Press. The memoir recounts
the times, the mood, and high racial tension in Jacksonville during
the civil rights movement. “I am again honored by the
recognition of my book which simply sought to tell the true story of
courage and personal sacrifice in the fight against racism in
Jacksonville Florida during the late fifties and early sixties”,
said Hurst.

“Reader Views reviews more than
2,000 books per year from budding authors who have worked hard to
achieve their dream of being published,” Reader Views Managing
Editor Irene Watson says. “Our Annual Literary Awards recognize
the very best of these up-and-coming authors, all talented writers
who we know have very promising writing careers ahead of them.”

The Reader Views Annual Literary Awards
are granted in fiction and nonfiction categories, as well as
regional, global and specialized sponsored categories. The entries
are first read and judged by Reader Views reviewers, all avid readers
with a wide range of experiences, considered experts in the
respective fields. The second line judges make the final decision.

This is Hurst’s second award this
month. Earlier this week, he won the Bronze Medal in the Florida
Nonfiction category of the 2008 Florida Book Awards. It is the Eighth
Award garnered by Hurst since “It was never about a hot dog and
a Coke®!” was published in February of 2008.

“It was never about a hot dog and
a Coke®!” is available in Jacksonville, Florida at Borders
Book Store on Southside Blvd, the Book Tique in the Downtown
Jacksonville Public Library on Laura St., San Marco Book Store, and
online through the book’s web site, rodneyhurst.com, amazon.com
(and most online book stores).